Metro network transport platforms must be compact, scalable, and agile to conquer the specific challenges of this key portion of the transport network. Growing and shifting traffic in the metro has triggered these challenges.

Today’s cloud-optimized metro network transport platforms “must” be:

Compact – with optimal power and performance in a form factor that meets metro operational cost targets

Scalable – to have the capacity you need when you need it to aggregate and transport multiple, high-performance services

Agile and intelligent – to dynamically reconfigure network resources to get services to your customers faster

The PSTN is dead. We all know this because all we hear about is IP and government-backed PSTN sunset requirements. Right? If that is actually the case, then when Dialogic sells a softswitch, why do we also still usually sell media gateways as part of the overall solution?

The proliferation of LTE networks is making life pretty sweet – and fast – for mobile users right now. Consumers are spending more time watching videos from their smartphones and tablets, all the while never knowing the complex signaling protocols that are giving them a seamless experience, regardless of whether they’re roaming in and out of 3G and 4G territory. LTE’s signaling protocol, Diameter, makes the interactions with other networks possible, and it might be the most important enabler mobile consumers never heard of.

Last week, I was in the U.K. and I had a bit of a frustrating experience. I have 4G service in the U.S., and I own a 4G-capable smartphone. I know there is 4G service in the U.K., yet I couldn’t get the service working.

One of the big, glittering bright spots in the mobile industry right now is shining straight out from LTE. Global deployments are ramping up – there are about 200 commercial LTE networks right now – and subscribers are signing on in huge numbers. Rapid growth always carries consequences, but some of the most significant repercussions are those that users barely notice, even though they are directly affected by them. Because of its speed, LTE delivers an attractive mobile on-ramp to the Internet, which is changing the way smartphone and tablet owners use their devices.

Last week, I attended IT Expo in Las Vegas, which is the last real horizontal communications tradeshow in the U.S. The show covers a variety of topics and does it well. I would say the theme of this show was “getting down to earth,” which is a weird theme considering the show was in Las Vegas, which is about as fake as it can get. But the show did a very good job of covering the implementation of topics, such as WebRTC, mobile video, UC and cloud.

The August 19th edition of Mobile World Live featured a survey from EE saying “LTE is knocking public WiFi usage.” The article went on to say that WiFi usage among LTE users has decreased by 37 percent since April. At a high level, this makes sense. Since LTE has speeds that make it equivalent to a mobile on-ramp to the internet, and assuming a relatively flat monthly data rate, then why not just stay on LTE if it’s fast enough and if it costs the same? You would too, right?

As different endpoints come into play and different types of networks come into play, the mixing of the different codecs and the robustness of the underlying media server become even more important. As WebRTC begins to take hold, adding yet another type of codec and signaling into the conference, the mixing gets even more complicated. Sometimes, this mixing results in weird-sounding conferences, with such technical difficulties as echoing, differing loudness of participants, or some participants’ lines being dropped.

Phone conferences are boring, right? You get your 800 number, call in, enter your pin code, and just like that – you’re dumped into what is far too often a painful conference call. How many times have you heard someone on a call ask, “Can you say that again?” Conference call participants don’t ask this question repeatedly because the sound quality is poor, but because the entire conference call format is boring and there are too many other distractions happening on their side of the phone. They’re emailing and instant messaging instead of engaging and collaborating.

I’ll be speaking at the upcoming IT Expo West show in Las Vegas on August 27, where one of the topics I’ll be presenting on is, “How to make video part of your mobile strategy.” Mobile video is one of the most significant parts of the smartphone experience. YouTube’s most recent statistics report shows that mobile viewership makes up more than 25 percent of its global watch time, with more than one billion views a day. On certain carrier networks, mobile video traffic is responsible for as much as 70 percent of all mobile traffic, according to ByteMobile analysis. Further, the average iPad user generates three times the data traffic that an iPhone subscriber does.